School Address
165 (Unit E) New Boston Street
Woburn MA 01801
Krav Maga Yashir is the system/style of Krav Maga taught by 5th Degree Black Belt, Gershon Ben Keren, who in 2010
was inducted into the Museum of Israeli Martial Arts in Herzliya, Israel. He is alos the author of three Amazon
best selling books on Krav Maga. His full-time school is located in Woburn, Massachusetts, just north of Boston.
165 (Unit E) New Boston Street
Woburn MA 01801
It is easy to confuse combat sports such as MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) with reality. As real as such fights look, and as skilled as the fighters are they always face a single opponent. This is to allow them to demonstrate their skills and techniques fully and is necessary to provide a sporting matchup that is entertaining to watch. However, in real-life situations, the visual and entertaining elements of a confrontation aren’t important, and the goal of any aggressor is to end the fight as quickly as possible and to – in most cases - provide maximum punishment to the other party. There are several ways that an individual can improve their chances of doing this. One way is to use a weapon, another is to involve other individuals. With real-life violence, there is no concept of equity and fairness. In fact, any aggressor wants to make sure that the fight is unfair and to their advantage. Increasing the number of people involved also increases the risk that one of those individuals is armed, so multiple assailant incidents are statistically more likely to be ones where weapons are present.
Krav Maga, as a reality-based self-defense system, recognizes the possibility of violent incidents involving multiple assailants. When it is understood that crime and violence are generally activities that teenagers and young offenders engage in, and that young people tend to spend more time socializing with others, than older people, it can be seen that violence involving multiple attackers, may be more prevalent than we think, and something that may be more of a “norm” than an exception e.g., in the US, the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) reports that around 32% of all street robberies involve more than one offender. In the UK, the Crime Survey for England and Wales found that this was somewhat higher, at around 40% (2019-2020). It is also worth noting that based on reports from the US Bureau of Statistics (2019) about 36% of robberies involved a weapon (29% being a firearm, and 7% some type of bladed weapon). Obviously, these rates, for both multiple assailants and weapons, vary somewhat between jurisdictions and locales.
In real-life multiple attacker scenarios, assailants don’t wait in turn, to launch their attacks, but in turn look to overwhelm those they’ve chosen to assault by sheer weight/force of numbers. This often means that in such incidents, a person may end up on the ground having to deal with a group, who are stomping and kicking. A large part of dealing with multiple assailants is to remain standing in order to exit the situation at the earliest opportunity. Whilst, not everybody in a group may be equally committed to the attack, with some participants holding somewhat back, most will try to get involved at some point and to some degree based on group dynamics, and peer pressure. This means it is usually better to try and align yourself to try and take on as few attackers as possible, all the time trying to create a safe opportunity to disengage and run, usually be trying to get to the “flanks” of the group. All of this can be extremely difficult, especially if working in a confined environment where there is little room to move.
Like all physical confrontations, ones involving multiple attackers, are best avoided, and the same strategy of disengaging at the earliest opportunity is usually the most effective option. However, creating such opportunities are harder when there is more than one person.